Part 76 (1/2)
”Because--have I not told you already?--because”--with a little dry sob--”I love you so dearly that to encourage thoughts of you would unfit me for my work. And it is partly for your own sake I do it, for something tells me we shall never marry each other; and why should you spend your life dreaming of a shadow?”
”It is the cruelest resolution a woman ever formed,” replies he, ignoring as beneath notice the latter part of her speech, and, putting away her hands, takes once more to his irritable promenade up and down the room.
Molly is crying, silently, exhaustedly. ”My burden is too heavy for me,” she murmurs, faintly.
”Then why not let me help you to bear it?”
”If it will comfort you, Teddy”--brokenly--”I will give in so far as to promise to write to you in six months. I ask you to wait till then. Is it too long? If so, remember you are free--believe me it will be better so--and I perhaps shall be happier in the thought----” And here incontinently she breaks down.
”Don't,” says Luttrell, hurriedly, whose heart grows faint within him at the sight of her distress. ”Molly, I give in. I am satisfied with your last promise. I shall wait forever, if that will please you. Who am I, that I should add one tear to the many you have already shed?
Forgive me, my own love.”
”Yes, but do not say anything more to me to-day; I am tired,” says Molly, submitting to his caresses, though still a little sore at heart.
”Only one thing more,” says this insatiable young man, who evidently holds in high esteem the maxim to ”strike while the iron is hot.” ”You agree to a renewal of our engagement?”
”I suppose so. Although I know it is an act of selfishness on my part.
Nothing can possibly come of it.”
”And if it is selfishness in you, what is it in me?” asks he, humbly.
”You know as well as I do I am no match for you, who, with your face, your voice” (Molly winces perceptibly), ”your manner, might marry whom you choose. Yet I do ask you to wait”--eagerly--”until something comes to our aid, to be true to me, no matter what happens, until I can claim you.”
”I will wait; I _will_ be true to you,” she answers, with dewy eyes uplifted to his, and a serene, earnest face. As she gives her promise a little sigh escapes her, more full of content, I think, than any regret.
After coming to this conclusion they talk more rationally for an hour or so (a lover's hour, dear reader, is not as other hours; it never drags; it is not full of yawns; it does not make us curse the day we were born); and then Luttrell, by some unlucky chance, discovers he must tear himself away.
As Molly rises to bid him good-bye, she catches her breath, and presses her hand to her side.
”I have such a pain here,” she says.
”You don't go out,” says her lover, severely; ”you want air. I shall speak to Let.i.tia if you won't take more care of yourself.”
”I have not been out of the house for so long, I quite dread going.”
”Then go to-morrow. If you will walk to the wood nearest you,--where you will see no one,--I will meet you there.”
”Very well,” says Molly, obediently; and when they have said good-bye for the fifth time, he really takes his departure.
How to reveal her weighty secret to Let.i.tia troubles Molly much,--an intimate acquaintance with her sister-in-law's character causing her to know its disclosure will be received not only with discouragement, but with actual disapproval. And yet--disclose it she must.
But how to break it happily. Having thought of many ways and means, and rejected them all, she decides, with a sigh, that plain speaking will be best.
”Let.i.tia,” she says, this very evening,--Luttrell having been gone some hours,--”do you know Signor Marigny's address?”
She is leaning her elbows on the writing-table, and has let her rounded chin sink into her palms' embrace; while her eyes fix themselves steadily upon the pen, the paper, anything but Let.i.tia.
”Signor Marigny! Your old singing-master? No. Why do you ask, dear?”
”Because I want to write to him.”
”Do you? And what----? No, I have not got his address; I don't believe I ever had it. How shall you manage?”